


an oath to keep

by heartslogos



Category: Gideon the Ninth
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Spoilers, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-24
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-10-26 05:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20736689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartslogos/pseuds/heartslogos
Summary: She is certain of two things.One, when Harrowhark Nonagesimus gets her she’s going to be so mad at Gideon that she’s going to skip straight past frosty rage and into frothing at the corners of the mouth and she might try to pop each individual vertebrae of Gideon’s spine out through Gideon’s mouth like a candy dispenser.Two, Gideon is deader than disco. Which provides a minor sliver of hope because disco has a weird tendency to dip its toe back into living every so often before being quickly shunted off into its shallow grave.





	an oath to keep

Gideon is sitting on a dull ashy rock, boots covered in dull ashy dirt, staring out at a dull ashen sky as dull ash clouds puff around her. She is waiting for a drop ship to pick her up and take her away.

She is certain of two things.

One, when Harrowhark Nonagesimus gets her she’s going to be so mad at Gideon that she’s going to skip straight past frosty rage and into frothing at the corners of the mouth and she might try to pop each individual vertebrae of Gideon’s spine out through Gideon’s mouth like a candy dispenser.

Two, Gideon is deader than disco. Which provides a minor sliver of hope because disco has a weird tendency to dip its toe back into living every so often before being quickly shunted off into its shallow grave.

Gideon, in fact, does feels some minor, weird, buzzing feeling in the back of her skull that signals to her that she’s not all the way gone yet. Just ninety nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine percent there.

She raises a hand and runs it through her hair, as she sighs, slumping down on the rock to stare up at the bleak sky.

Trust being dead to land her back at the Ninth. The afterlife couldn’t have something a little bit more interesting? Gideon’s no saint and didn’t have many expectations for what the other side would hold for her, but surely it wouldn’t be ye old homestead of eternal bleakness.

Figures that the bad place for the bad people is just _the Ninth_. It explains so much, honestly.

So far Gideon has catalogued three bits of good news while sitting on her old rock friend.

One. She’s got her two hander. Its familiar weight means that this place can’t be completely awful. Real hell would’ve been stuck in the afterlife with the little metal wand of a rapier and the kind of alright knuckles.

Two. Gideon also still has her glasses. Unscratched, unbroken, and in perfectly mirrored condition that she can see her reflection in them.

Three. Gideon’s existence in the afterlife is not a complete mangled wreck like it was when Gideon threw herself into it to start with. Her arms and legs work, her torso isn’t a sieve with a bonus chance at tetanus, and — not as great, but neither here nor there — her face paint looks fresh, sharp, and unblemished. Which also leads to the bad news that Gideon poked at her face a bit and could still feel the angry little zits on her forehead and the sides of her face.

Being dead, apparently, does not rescue a person from acne. Acne is a powerful curse that extends beyond life. There can be no rescuing from acne.

“Ninth.”

Gideon looks up and is somehow disappointed to see Camilla.

“Yo,” Gideon stands up, waving awkwardly. “Do I apologize?”

Camilla blinks at her, confused, “What for?”

“You’re here.”

Camilla looks around, and shrugs. “Not for long.”

They both look up at the sound of ship engines.

Camilla’s hands rest on her hips as they watch the dull clouds part, and the lights of a ship start to come closer.

“Thank you for what you did back there,” Camilla says as they watch the ship descend. “You do your house proud.”

Gideon shrugs, uncomfortable at the thought of making the Ninth House feel anything positive. The Ninth could suck it. It wasn’t really —

“The Ninth has less syllables than _Harrowhark Nonagesimus_,” Gideon says.

Camilla’s lip twitches upward at the corner. Gideon has a feeling Camilla already knew that.

“It was an honor to fight with you,” Camilla says as the ship completes its descent, landing off in the distance and lowering its ramp. She turns to Gideon and holds her hand out. “I’m going to join my adept.”

Gideon grasps it. “Hey, what was it that you were supposed to do?”

Camilla’s smile is grim and thin. “Finish it.”

Gideon’s hand tightens on Camilla’s. “And — ?”

She doesn’t now how to finish that question.

Camilla nods once. “It is done.”

They both let go of each other and Camilla turns to walk away. Gideon watches her for a bit before returning to her rock.

“Gideon!”

She looks up and sees Camilla, almost at the ship.

“You could come with us,” Camilla yells out towards her, “You’ve done more than enough. Our part is over.”

Gideon stares at Camilla, and then beyond her at the ship. She imagines she can see Palamedes in the shadow of the ship’s entryway. Boy that would be an awkward ride to wherever dead people go next. No thanks.

“Pass. I’ll wait for mine,” Gideon yells back.

Camilla is very still in the distance before she raises an arm and waves, then turns and completes the walk onto the ship.

Gideon watches the ship as it slowly returns to the sky and away from here. Her throat tightens and she tells herself she isn’t crying. She’s got no paint or brushes. If she messes up her face it’s going to be stuck that way for eternity. No thanks.

Gideon doesn’t know how long she’s been here. It could be minutes. It could be hours. It could be days or years or centuries.

She doesn’t feel tired or thirsty or anything. She’s got enough to do. Infinite laps to run, push ups, crunches, squats, sword drills. She even messes around with pushing rocks around the bleak landscape.

“_You.”_

Gideon groans, sheathing her sword as she drops her stance. She turns and she sees the hulking mass of Crux lumbering towards her, face grim and foreboding as ever.

“Come on, Crux,” Gideon gestures around them, “We’re dead. Can you drop being a giant wanker for like…a minute? I’ll even pretend I don’t know about the part where you rigged my ship so I would die as soon as I got off planet.”

Crux scowls, coming to a stop a few feet away from her, “Death is the least of what those who abandon their house deserve.” The formal marshal looks her over. “Ultimately you made up for your many flaws, though I can see that your disrespect and lack of manners remains unfixable.”

“Thanks?” Gideon hedges that this is supposed to be the most backhanded of complements, so backhanded that it goes right around to being a complete insult. “You know, Crux, I didn’t think you’d ever kick the bucket. Do I get to ask what did you in? Was it spite? Did you enjoy yourself so thoroughly on the news of my death that you kicked it to see if it was real? Did your dusty old bones just give in and send you collapsing to the floor in a puddle of skin?”

If Crux’s scowl gets any deeper it would threaten to become engraved onto his very bones themselves. Crux’s scowl is so deeply etched into his face that Gideon swears that you could pack the grooves like pockets.

“You wear the paint and patterns of the Ninth like an unattended toddler who put them on in the dark with their fingers,” Crux says. Overhead Gideon hears the sound of a ship coming.

“Looks like your ride’s here,” Gideon says, “Bet you hope that I’m not the one who rigged it this time, eh? Wouldn’t that be a nice turn of the dramatic? You want to offer me some skin mags? For old time’s sake?”

Gideon scrambles to hide behind her rock as Crux advances.

“You can’t kill me, Crux. I’m not scared of you, you old bag of dust,” Gideon says as Crux strides past her and her rock towards the ship, one hand on her sword just in case. The entire way the sound of his breathing and the rattling of his bones made Gideon think of a goody bag for necromancers with the knuckles in it being shaken about. Gideon gives Crux’ back the finger.

“Gideon Nav,” Crux says as he walks towards the ship, “You have been a blot on the records of the Ninth since you fell onto our heads.”

Gideon is about to fire off a retort regarding the lack of heads in the Ninth in general, when Crux continues.

“But you saved the Reverend Daughter, and thus the Ninth. You may have been a blot on our records, but you will remain recorded, nonetheless. You were a cavalier worthy of service.”

Gideon watches Crux shamble all the way to the ship and get onto it, saying nothing in return.

Aiglamene comes around eventually, and Gideon is surprised to find herself sad to see her old mentor.

Her face is, dare Gideon think it? Fond.

“What’s up?” Gideon says, mustering up a small salute for the old woman. “You outlasted Crux! Good on you.”

“You are a wretch and a fool, and a legend of the Ninth House,” Aiglamene says. “It is good to see that despite the legends that came after your death and the amount of heroics involved in those legends, you are still Gideon Nav. When we heard word of what you did, I didn’t want to believe it. I couldn’t believe it. You did — “

“If you say I did the Ninth proud I’m going to throw myself down right here and have the biggest fit you’ve ever seen in your life, and since you’ve been around since the beginning of time it’s going to be one impressive fit.”

Aiglamene gives her a flat look that makes Gideon’s guts gurgle in protest.

“You did _me_ proud, you thrasonical miscreant.”

“You got a dictionary for that one?”

Aiglamene sighs. “I can’t believe that I actually missed you.”

Gideon puts a hand over her heart, “Captain. You _do_ care.”

“I regret the waste of emotion every second I spend looking at you. What are you wearing on your face?”

“Glasses and face paint. Don’t I look like a real proper Niner?”

“You look like a proper malignancy.”

It feels like it’s too soon when the ship comes for Aiglamene. Gideon wants to keep her here, ask her a billion questions about what exactly happened after Gideon died. About Harrow. About the Canaan House. About everyone and everything. About what it felt like to see Crux dead and do a jig over his body.

Aiglamene might even stay.

Gideon’s not so selfish as to ask that, though. So Gideon just gestures to the ship.

“No one’s rigged that one to blow, swear it,” Gideon jokes.

Aiglamene just looks at her, like she’s studying Gideon’s face. Gideon half expects the woman to command her to drop and give her some drills, make sure she’s fighting fit. Gideon expects that she’d do it on reflex.

“If you wait here, you will have a long time to go,” Aiglamene says. “You’ve done your service, Gideon. You did more than what anyone could have asked you, more than what duty asked. You’re free, Gideon. No one owns you, no one can ask anything of you anymore. You can walk away.”

That would be nice if it were true. But it isn’t.

“I made an oath, Captain,” Gideon says. “And I intend to keep it.”

Aiglamene starts to smile.

“You know, so when her lady of eternal gloom and dusk shows up I can tell her that this is what keeping a promise looks like.”

The smile doesn’t go away.

Aiglamene holds her hand out, Gideon grasps it, expecting a firm shake and a serious and slightly formal nod goodbye, but the old woman pulls Gideon in with surprising strength. Gideon is surprised to find that she’s actually taller than Aiglamene now. Which is weird, because one would think you would stop growing when dead.

“Goodbye, Gideon Nav,” Aiglamene whispers into Gideon’s ear. “And good luck.”

It takes a huge amount of effort to uncurl her fingers from Aiglamene’s robes as they part.

Gideon watches Aiglamene go. And when Aiglamene raises her hand to wave goodbye as the ship’s door closes, Gideon salutes. And she holds that position until the clouds have closed over the ship and the gray world is silent again.

There are others. Eventually Lachrimorta and Aisamorta kick it. Gideon takes great pains to make sure that she’s well hidden when she hears those two biddies coming. She’s there for a handful of nuns she recognizes, some other serfs and cultists, various laypeople. Most of them she doesn’t know by name. There are some she doesn’t recognize at all. She does her best to remain hidden for the most part. Gideon would rather not have to deal with them.

Time must pass, though Gideon doesn’t really feel it. It’s like all of time is a giant slush that Gideon stands in the middle of, unmoved and unmoving.

The temptation to get on one of those ships and get away from here is there, but Gideon has something stronger than that. An oath.

Gideon’s word is important. She can’t leave here until it’s completed.

So she waits. She practices drills with her sword, even though she doesn’t really need to anymore. It does keep her fit for running away and hiding from faces she doesn’t want to deal with, which is nice. She does laps. She does sit ups. Crunches, squats, one handed push ups. Clap push ups. Hand stands. Whatever.

She even does the motions for the drills with a rapier and knuckle using a stick she’d found.

Gideon waits.

It feels like not long enough when she feels the dreaded step of Harrowhark Nonagesimus on the horizon.

Gideon turns, hand resting on the pommel of her two hander, the other adjusting her glasses as the shadowy figure of velvet and lace and bone draw closer.

She hears a ship in the distance.

“One flesh, one end,” Gideon whispers to herself as Harrow comes into close enough view that she can see the press of her thin lips, the coiled tension in her shoulders, and the spite flickering in her eyes. “Sup.”

“_You_,” Harrow snarls. Gideon holds her ground as Harrow picks up the pace, great clouds of gray dirt and ash puffing away behind her as her long robes hiss along the ground. “You impertinent, selfish, foolish, insufferable, malicious, contrary _shit_.”

“I feel like that this is just the prologue for an epic speech,” Gideon says, pointing towards the ship coming towards them, “You want to discuss this on that instead?”

“I’m not going to discuss anything with you Griddle,” Harrow snaps, but continues walking towards the ship, “I am not having a discussion. I am going to _tell_ you exactly why you did a completely stupid and unnecessary thing. I am going to tell you exactly the many ways you were wrong and how idiotic you were. I am going to tell you, in great and exact detail, the many ways in which your choices negatively impacted me over the past centuries, and I am going to explain to you in a way that even your single brain cell — which, I imagine has much atrophied over time due to lack of any meaningful stimulus — can understand how incomprehensibly and stupendously ill advised your abrupt departure was and the repercussions of you disobeying my orders was.”

Gideon falls into step behind Harrow, folding her arms around the back of her head and grinning at the back of Harrow’s.

“Oh, you did miss me.”

“It was a cold universe without you, Griddle,” Harrow snaps. Gideon beams. “And I had to deal with it by myself. I had to hold a sword, Griddle. A blasted sword. Do you know how frustrating it was to do — to do _laps_? It took me _years_, Griddle. _Years_. Just to swing a metal stick. A metal stick. Did it ever strike you that I had better things to do? That such physical labor was meant to be delegated to one such as yourself? I doubt it.”

Gideon stops waking and just watches Harrow go at it, snapping as vicious and mean spirited and terribly frustrating as ever. She missed this. She missed Harrow.

And now she’s going to have forever with this.

Gideon’s smile feels like it’s going to crack her face. She’s a masochist.

“Are you coming or not Gideon?” Harrow turns about, one foot on the ship’s ramp, tapping impatiently. “I’ve been waiting for this end for _millenium_, Gideon Nav. How long are you going to keep me waiting?”

“You’d think with millennium to yourself you’d have learned patience,” Gideon says, slowly walking towards her. “Besides. Aren’t I worth waiting for?”


End file.
